Red, Red, Gray
by Lynn Jones
Summary: Her hair, the blood, and the metal. Delic relives the first time he met the fiery redhead he would fall in love with and reflects on her death.


**This is not what I planned when I started this. Just a heads-up.**

**Disclaimer: Cyra is mine, but that's it.**

Delic knew the usuals in his night club. He knew the women who didn't mind keeping him company and the ones that would pour their drinks over his head if he approached -though there weren't many of those. He knew the men who would joke and appraise the women with him, and he knew the ones who would punch him for eyeing their girls. He knew the bartenders and the owner, and he knew how to wheedle a discount out of them.

But this woman was new. Her frame was lithe, her movements smooth and balanced, like a cat's. She flowed like water, though her long red hair blazed down her back like a stream of fire. Her green eyes shone against her pale features.

And her body. Delic couldn't help but lick his lips as his gaze raked over her form. Despite the slim, powerful build, she had curves in all the right places.

After a moment's speculation about her measurements, he noticed that one of the regulars was about to make a pass at the newcomer. Delic watched, fascinated, as the woman looked the hopeful man over and dismissed him cooly. When he tried to insist, she did something Delic didn't see because of the people between them, and the man scurried for his usual partner. As he did so, he passed Delic, and the blond reached out to nudge the man.

"Bad luck," Delic sympathized. The man glanced at him and shook his head.

"She said she's waiting for someone specific," he explained. "And she said tall, strong blonds were more her type than me." That part was muttered sullenly under his breath. Then he continued at a normal volume, though in a rather whiney tone, "It's not fair, Heiwajima. You get all the girls." Delic shrugged at that.

"Not my fault I'm better in bed than you," he replied with a confident grin. Then he waved the man on and glanced back at the curvy redhead. Her brilliant green eyes were fixed on him. She gave him a flirtatious smirk and turned to lean against the bar, arching her back slightly so her body was stretched just enough to display her full breasts, flat stomach, and round butt in a way that forced the blond to resist the urge to lick his lips again like a dog eyeing a treat. She glanced at him again, and he found an invitation in her eyes. He wove his way through the crowd and paused beside her to look her over again. "That poor bastard you just turned down is going to have a rough night if his girlfriend finds out she has competition," Delic murmured. The woman eyed him in a speculative way that said she liked what she saw, and was wondering how best to have it for herself. "I'm-"

"I know who you are," she purred and Delic could feel a shiver trying to work it's way up his spine. The way her lips wrapped around her words...she had an accent, one he couldn't place, soft and rippling. He wondered how his name would sound in that accent. "You're Delic Heiwajima, and I've heard you know how to treat a girl right." Okay, correction. He wondered how his name would sound in that accent when the speaker was writhing in pleasure beneath him.

"Keep talking, beautiful, and you can find out for yourself," he replied. She graced him with a knowing half-smirk.

"Is that so?" she purred, taking note of the way he shifted his balance, as though suddenly uncomfortable. She straightened from leaning against the bar and stepped closer to him. "You seem to have a bit of an issue," she continued, turning slightly so her hip brushed against his growing erection. He chuckled and reached out to lightly trace her jawline with his fingertips.

"Trust me, that's not an issue unless the private rooms are full," he replied. Her sexy grin was all the answer he needed.

Barely five minutes later, he was holding open the door to the best private room in the club, and the redheaded woman smirked at him briefly before stepping almost daintily inside. An approving hum told him she was eying his broad shoulders again, and he turned toward her. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed beneath her breasts, and watching him with those brilliant emerald eyes. Her lips were curled upwards as she watched him walk toward her.

He didn't usually kiss the women he slept with much. They were usually one night only, and even if they were regulars, it was just sex. In his mind, kissing implied affection, commitment, not just the desire he held for his usual bedmates.

This one, though. This one, he couldn't help but kiss, long and slow at first, then deeper and more urgently as he felt his pants tighten at her lips' enthusiastic response. The hands stroking his hips and stomach and trailing ever lower may have had something to do with that, too.

"I came here to find you," Cyra purred as her fingers worked to undo his pants. Responding to her eagerness, he slid his hands under her shirt and blinked when he found a thin layer of what felt like woven metal instead of warm skin. She stretched up to kiss him deeply, one hand finally undoing his pants and pushing them down as the other lifted to tangle in his hair.

"You're no ordinary woman, are you?" he murmured against her neck when she finally broke the kiss. She gave him a sly smile.

"Would you have chosen me if I was, my love?" she replied, tilting her head back to give him better access. He chuckled dryly. Or he meant to. The sound came out choked and humorless.

Then he woke, making that choked, humorless sound, which eventually trailed off into silent grief.

Cyra.

He had never known her last name, just that she was a bodyguard who had been hired by a friend of his to watch over him for a few months. She had spent the nights with him, her odd woven-metal armor and the odd silvery-white daggers she used set aside as they pleasured each other.

But then, months later, when he was utterly convinced their would be no attack (he had never been sure why anyone would attack him anyway, or why he would need a bodyguard), and she was starting to believe the same thing, when he had completely fallen for her, and she was starting to fall for him, that's when everything went to hell.

The attack came, and it was a handful of idiots who were jealous or whose girlfriends had cheated on them with Delic -before he had met Cyra that night at the club, of course- and they had lain in wait. They had wanted him to grow complacent. They had been waiting for him to have a woman he desired above all others that they would take from him, as he had supposedly taken the women they desired from them.

And when the attack was over and the attackers lay dead or dying, their blood spilled by Cyra's daggers, that was when Delic's own special version of hell had broken loose, because Cyra's fiery hair, cascading down her back, had darkened with blood that couldn't have come from her defeated opponents.

She had kept her back to him, kept her hair down to conceal the wound she had received in the initial volley of gunfire.

By the time he was safe, she was on the verge of collapsing, and by the time he hung up on the emergency operator, she had finished bleeding out in his arms.


End file.
